I’m the editor of (and a contributor to) a collection of essays about the cult film The Room, considered by many—fans and critics alike—to be “the worst movie ever made.” You Are Tearing Me Apart, Lisa!: The Year’s Work on The Room, the Worst Movie Ever Made was published by Indiana University Press on October 25, 2022, in anticipation of the film’s 20th anniversary year (2023).
The book is the latest entrant in IUP’s celebrated The Year’s Work pop culture book series. In fact, it was inspired by The Year’s Work in Lebowski Studies (2009), which went through two printings and was reviewed by the New York Times and Washington Post, among many other outlets.
It’s something of a dream come true; I’ve been obsessed with and mystified by The Room since a friend sent me clips of it hosted on the pop culture blog Videogum (RIP) in 2009. Since then I’ve attended several public screenings of the movie, including one that I organized in Brooklyn, and I’ve watched it at home a few dozen times. It continues to be shown shown around the country and the world, often monthly, and has come to take on a Rocky Horror Picture Show feel. Like Rocky Horror, fans of The Room have established a set of bizarre rituals that are performed religiously at each screening.
Despite its many, uh, quirks, The Room is so much more than just a bad (nay, absolutely terrible) movie. Calling it “the worst movie ever made” is fair enough, but the description sells the film woefully short. In actuality, The Room is a priceless cultural artifact. Completely by accident, it touches on so many concerns of modern life, including sincerity, authenticity, art-making, aesthetic judgment, Americanness, Hollywood, masculinity—hell, even life itself. I’m not kidding.
While the movie’s obvious blunders—absurd dialogue, Grand Canyon-sized plot holes, multiple softcore sex scenes, characters who magically disappear, etc.—have been on the radar of in-the-know pop culture writers, film nerds, and comedians for years, since the late aughts there has been a growing body of journalistic and academic writing about the movie. Some colleges actually teach The Room in order to dissect moviemaking conventions and show what not to do when making a film. The Disaster Artist, the award-winning 2017 film adaptation of The Room costar Greg Sestero’s 2013 memoir of the same name, about the surreal events surrounding The Room’s production, helped blast it even further into the mainstream.
As the movie continues to grab more and more mainstream attention, and as we near the film’s 20th anniversary year, it seems like the right time for a book that treats it seriously—but has a whole lot of fun while doing so. I’m here to tell you that You Are Tearing Me Apart, Lisa!: The Year’s Work on The Room, the Worst Movie Ever Made has brought the world’s greatest thinkers on The Room together, at last.
The book offers seventeen wide-ranging, thought-provoking essays on every conceivable aspect of the film, including deconstructions of its (many) technical, narrative, and philosophical issues; interpretations of its various meanings; analyses of its historical context and place in the cult canon; a look at the film’s influences, past and present; dissections of its unique fan culture; perspectives on how the persona of Tommy Wiseau came to be; and much more. To see for yourself, check out the table of contents below.
If you’re ready to snatch up a copy, here’s a link to the IUP website. Or, even better, buy one through your local independent bookstore.
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